The villa itself was at some distance from the centre of Neapolitan life, so that the average idle man or woman thought twice before calling, without a distinct object, and merely for a cup of tea and a cup-of-tea's worth of gossip.

There was not that constant coming and going of visitors in every degree of intimacy which might have been expected in the house of a woman of Bianca Corleone's beauty and position.

The world is easily tired of unhappy people, and men soon weary of worshipping a goddess who never smiles upon them.

As for the fact that Pietro Ghisleri was frequently at the villa, society refrained from throwing stones, in consideration of the extreme brittleness of its own glass dwelling.

Ghisleri was disliked in Naples, because he was a Tuscan; but Bianca, as a Roman, might have been more popular.
It need hardly be said that she preferred the isolation she enjoyed to a gayer existence.